


The World Thieves

by Untherius



Category: Disney Princesses, Emberverse - S. M. Stirling, Star Wars: New Republic Era - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-18
Updated: 2012-12-18
Packaged: 2017-11-21 10:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 10,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/596583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Untherius/pseuds/Untherius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An investigation of a string of mysterious stellar novas at the edge of the galaxy leads Princess Leia Organa-Solo to a very unexpected discovery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bregon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sorcyress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorcyress/gifts).



Not so long ago, in a galaxy not so far away....

Princess Leia Organa-Solo stood at-ease on the bridge of NRS _Halconin_ , an MC-140 Scythe-class Mon Calamari battlecruiser. Five other ships accompanied hers: two _Imperator_ -class Star Destroyers, the _Anvil_ and the _Dauntless_ ; and three Dreadnaught-class heavy cruisers, the _Hammerhead_ , the _Death-knell_ , and the _Iron-ring_. Sometimes Leia wondered who named those things.

“Ensign,” she said, “report.”

“Five standard minutes from Bregon System, Captain,” said the human Ensign.

“Helm,” said Leia, “prepare to drop out of hyperspace.”

“Acknowledged,” said the Bothan helmsman.

Instructions were always in Basic. There was simply too much linguistic variation throughout the galaxy, Republic worlds and otherwise.

After several more minutes, the helmsman said, “Disengaging now.”

The whirling marble illusion of subspace dissolved into elongated pinpricks of light that quickly contracted into a standard star field as the ship dropped out of hyperspace. The Bregon System resolved into view.

Bregon was one of the outer rim systems. For years, there had been strange reports from all over that sector of space. They all came from different sources, but they all agreed on two important points. First, stars were going nova and supernova at an unprecedented rate. Many of them were either white or main-sequence stars that should still have many eras of life left in them. Second, whole planets were disappearing without a trace—not destroyed, simply gone. Most accounts were some variation on: some captain or other had come out of hyperspace, only to find their destination inhabited world gone, then had to leave almost immediately ahead of a stellar shock-wave. A few witnesses had reported seeing a craft of unknown configuration leave the system shortly before the star's explosion.

That was why Leia was there. There was a predictable pattern to the stellar deaths and the Bregon System should be next. New Republic Command hoped to catch whomever it was in the act. They'd sent Leia primarily because there was a high probability of a first-contact situation and that anyone who could destroy stars and make planets disappear was dangerous enough to require a diplomat of Leia's caliber.

In the near distance, a blue-green planet hung in the night, most of its dark side facing the New Republic task force. In the far distance, the system's sun shone brightly.

That was odd, thought Leia. They should have dropped out of hyperspace a lot closer to the planet.

“Lieutenant,” she said, “report.”

“Sensors are detecting an unusual gravimetric signature emanating from the third planet of the system. I believe it's responsible for pulling us out of hyperspace early. I'm also reading what appears to be an orbital defense system around the planet and a single vessel of unknown configuration about three hundred thousand standard miles from the planet.”

“I thought Bregon wasn't supposed to have any of that,” said Leia.

“They're not,” said the Lieutenant. “They're barely space-faring.”

Leia turned to a screen behind her. “Place it on the monitor and magnify.”

A moment later, an image of the planet appeared on the monitor. Leia counted at least a dozen of the “platforms.”

She turned back to the center of the bridge. “Show me that vessel and one of the platforms.”

A pair of rotating, three-dimensional images appeared in mid-space. One of them, the one identified as a platform, resembled some sort of cephalopod. The other consisted of a large, rotating sphere with some sort of conical projection on one side and supported by a superstructure bearing other smaller shapes.

“You're sure that ship's unknown?” said Leia.

The man punched some buttons and then shook his head. “Nothing's coming up in the database, Your Highness.”

Leia gazed at the pair of images. She'd seen a lot of different ships in her time. Some were clearly more functional than otherwise. Others, like those flown by the Naboo, had been designed with beauty in mind. Still others, like the _Imperator_ -class Star Destroyer, were intended to have a psychological effect. The two images before her looked very much like form following function, apparently at quite a distance.

An alarm sounded from the sensor station. “I'm reading two energy spikes, one of them around the planet. It seems to be emanating from the platforms. The other is coming from the vessel.”

“Weaponry?” said Leia.

“No, ma'am. Both are inconsistent with any weapons signature in the database. They're something else...something gravimetric with...something else. I'm sorry I can't be more specific. This is entirely new.”

“Raise deflector shields. Comm, signal the other ships to do the same. Put weapons on stand-by. We're not here for a fight, but if they want one, I don't intend to disappoint.”

“If those are weapons, ma'am,” continued the Lieutenant at the sensor station, “they don't seem to be directed at us. But again, that's hard to say. Wait...I can give you a visual on those platforms.”

“Show me,” said Leia. She turned back to the display screen. The platforms around the planet were arcing some sort of energy between them. She leaned closer and peered at the image. “What are they doing?”

“Your guess is better than mine, Your Highness,” said the lieutenant.

“Comm,” said Leia, “signal the other ships. If anyone has any idea what those are and what they're doing, they're to notify me immediately.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said the comm. Officer as he punched buttons and relayed the command.

After a few more minutes, another alarm sounded at the sensor station. “Now what?” said Leia.

“Your Highness, the planet is moving.”

“Planets do that.”

“Yes, ma'am. But it's not just orbiting. It's moving...away from the system. It doesn't appear to be moving through space, so much as across it. It's...shifting. Ma'am, I've studied things like this in the Academy, but we were always taught that it was entirely theoretical.”

“It looks like someone disagrees with your professors,” said Leia as she watched the planet quickly fade into the far distance, flicker for a few moments, and then vanish from sight. “Hail that vessel,” said Leia.

The comm. Officer complied. After a few moments, “Nothing, ma'am.”

“Hail them again.”

Even after a third attempt, there was nothing.

A third warning came from the sensor station. “I'm reading a massive power surge from that vessel.”

As Leia watched out the main view-port, a stream of multicolored energy erupted from the vessel and lanced out straight toward the sun in the distance. It lasted for several minutes, then abruptly faded.

A fourth warning sounded. “Ma'am, the sun is going nova!”

Leia whirled around. “What?! How long do we have?”

“Unknown. Readings all over the place. It could be days, it could be hours, I don't know. But its core is destabilizing in an incredibly erratic manner. And that ship is leaving the system.”

“Helm! Plot a pursuit course and relay it to the other ships. Comm, order the Death-knell to return to Coruscant and relay everything to Command. This is more information than we've had for years and they're going to want to know about it. All other vessels with me. Now, get us out of here, best speed.”

“Acknowledged.”

A few minutes later, Leia watched as the stars before her elongated and the ship jumped into hyperspace.

* * *

Edge of Andromeda Galaxy, Primary Collision Zone  
March 22, CY 59, 2063 AD

Lord Mike Havel floated on the bridge of the Rapunzel Force Ship _Kodiak_ , a _Piranha_ -class star-killer, his caudal peduncle strapped to the padded Captain's post. He gazed out the polarized main viewport toward the sun that was his target. He glanced out the port-side viewport toward the inhabited world they were about to move. He could see the occasional twinkle as sunlight glinted off the planet-movers in orbit.

As per protocol, he'd moved the _Kodiak_ to the required distance in order to keep the different physical effects from influencing each other. One battle-group had been too close together when activating their respective tools and the quantum feedback had obliterated the entire system. The crews of all ships, plus the thirty million inhabitants of the planet, had all perished. That was why it was also procedure to avoid killing a sun until all of its orbiting inhabited worlds were at least in the process of leaving the system.

“Captain,” said an Ensign, “I'm picking up a strange disturbance at the edge of the system. I think we have company.”

“Great,” Mike muttered. “Are they close enough for a visual?”

“No, sir.”

“Let's hope they stay that way. We're already embroiled in one war. We don't need another one on top of it. But let's get this done before they decide to come any closer.”

Mike closed his eyes and pushed his mind toward the lead vessel parked above the planet's north pole. _Lord Bear to Princess Mary_ , he thought.

_Princess Mary here_ , replied Mike's daughter.

_What's your status?_

_We're almost ready. Field strength is at ninety-five percent and climbing. We'll be ready to move within five minutes._

_Good, because we've got company._

_Uh-oh. What kind of company?_

_We're not sure. Several large vessels. They're too far out of range for a visual, but they seem to be closing fast. We think we'll be done before they're in range, though. But for all we know, they've seen us already and are firing phasers or some-such._

_Whoever they are, I hope they have enough sense to leave._

_No kidding. Primary and secondary capacitors are full and tertiaries are at eighty-five percent and climbing. Disruption stream is at full. We'll have full discharge as you're on your way out._

_I still think you push the timing too much, Lord Bear._

_Do you really need to call me that?_

_According to the Uniform Code of..._

_Yes, yes, I know the regs. But this is a closed channel._

_Closed channel? Daddy...Lord Bear...this isn't Star Trek, whatever that is. Besides, you know as well as I that it's just as important to observe the rules in private as it is to observe them in public. You may be my father and commander of this battle-group, but I still out-rank you._

_Yes, your Highness._

_We're almost at critical energy level. Course to Alpha-Centauri is laid in. We're on our way out in minutes._

_Then we'll see you back at the barn. Maybe we can all be home in time for Christmas this year. Havel out._

_Swift out._

Mike broke the telepathic connection and returned his attention to his own ship. “Status?” 

“Tertiary capacitors are at full.” 

The sun ahead was jiggling a little, which most certainly meant the ship was moving. “Hold her steady, helm. I think it knows what we're trying to do. Damn, it's fighting hard! Gunnery control, fire at will!” 

“With pleasure, sir.” The ship hummed as its main weapon discharged, a powerful beam of multicolored energy that Mike still thought looked like an umbilical cord on steroids viewed during an LSD trip. 

“This is war,” said Mike. “There's nothing pleasurable about any of it.” 

Mike watched as the Bifrost beam lanced out from the ship and toward the star. “Helm, plot a course home and get us out of here the minute we've achieved full discharge.” 

“Now that, sir, is a pleasure.” 

“Damn right,” said Mike with a smile. 


	2. Rapunzel

Outer Edge of Asteroid Belt, Rapunzel System  
December 19, CY 59, 2063 AD

RFS _Kodiak_ emerged into normal space. Mike Havel watched as the asteroid belt came into view. Its outer edge drifted some five hundred miles directly ahead, visible as moving twinkles as its rocks tumbled over and over in the distant sunlight.

Mike hated having to travel the some 200 million remaining miles to Mars orbit in normal space. But with at least forty thousand warships returning from the front, there was a lot of concern about them running into each other. Mike had rolled his eyes about that. Each star-killer was larger than five aircraft carriers, and a planet-mover a bit larger than that. Even with fifty thousand SK's, thousands more under construction, and six hundred PM's, there was still an awful lot of space out there. Surely there was way more than enough elbow room.

But then Queen Rapunzel had started going off about orbital dynamics, quantum momentum, and gravimetric omicron outwash. Mike understood Newtonian mechanics just fine, at least in concept. But all that other stuff went way over his head. In the end, he, along with every other starship captain, had given up and said, “Yes, your Stellar Majesty!”

Mike flipped open the lid on the end of the speaking tube leading to Engineering. “Chief,” he said, slowing down to allow for the echo through the tube. “Switch over to intra-systemic propulsion and engage at one-quarter.”

“Aye, sir,” came the hollow reply.

“Helm,” said Mike, “adjust course to take us over the asteroids, eighty miles relative plane. Six degrees should do it.” His pre-Change pilot experience came in handy in his newest job as a starship captain.

“Aye, sir,” said the helmsman.

Mike felt the ship's vibration change and the view tilt a little as the ship accelerated through normal space and pitched upward relative to the asteroid belt's orbital plane. He reached over to the large, blue-ish mirror fixed to the bulkhead next to him. Mike tapped on the blue-ish metal frame in a particular way.

Mike's reflection was shortly replaced by a different face behind which Mike could see a room wholly unlike the bridge of the Kodiak. “Bear Lord Michael Havel, RFS Kodiak, PSK-six-four-five, reporting in.”

The man in the mirror looked at something off-glass. “Acknowledged,” he said at length. “Welcome home, Captain.”

“It's good to BE home, Lieutenant. I don't suppose you could give me any information on any other arrivals, could you?”

“No, sir. You know the regulations. With all these ships returning...well, you'll be debriefed. And Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas to you, too.”

“Mars out.”

“Kodiak out,” said Mike. He tapped the frame again and the image again became his own. He smiled. It was indeed good to be home, for all that he still had hundreds of millions of miles left to travel. It was a good thing intra-system travel was measured in thousands of miles per hour.

An alarm sounded from the navigation station. “Sir!” The woman's voice sounded agitated. “I'm reading a heavy gravimetric signature directly astern. Same as that company in Andromeda.”

“They followed us?” said Mike as he twisted around to look out the aft viewport. “Distance?”

No sooner had he asked the question, than he spotted five distant objects, visible as glints in the sunlight. They closed faster than he thought possible. Within seconds, the glints resolved into five massive warships that hurtled toward him at astonishing speed, coming to an abrupt stop right over him with a blur of grey. An expanse of hull filled all viewports, looming over them like a stratus cloud, seemingly close enough to touch. Mike's eyes went wide and he let out a string of profanity as he spun back around.

“Helm!” he yelled, “Dive! Thirty degrees!” He flipped up the lid on the speaker tube. “Chief! I need full power! We've got company!”

“Just give me a few minutes to...”

“ _NOW!_ They're right on top of us!” Mike heard cussing through the tube. He almost smiled, as MacKenzies generally weren't disposed to using profanity.

The ship shook violently as it accelerated and pitched downward. The patchy grey hull outside receded a little, but not nearly fast enough for Mike's satisfaction. He leaned back to the tube. “Scotty!” It just so happened the Chief Engineer's name _was_ Scott. “I need more power!”

“I'm sorry, sir, I'm givin' 'er all she's got!” came the reply, the man's Scottish brogue thicker than usual.

“All she's got isn't good enough! What else ya got?”

There was a pause. “I'm patchin' th' firin' reactor inta th' propulsion lines, but ah canna guarantee it'll work.”

“Just do it!”

A few minutes later, their relative speed had increased, but still not nearly enough. “Scotty? I need better acceleration,” said Mike down the tube.

“She's on th' verge o' redline, sir. If I give 'er any more, she'll blow!”

“Dammit!” said Mike. “I _knew_ we should have put defensive weaponry on these things!”

“Do you think it would have done much against that?” said the lieutenant, pointing upward.

“Naw, you're probably right.” Mike could feel the sweat beading up on his bare chest. He reached over and tapped on the mirror's frame.

The lieutenant's face appeared in the glass. “Lord Bear,” he said, “I thought...”

“We've got company,” Mike interrupted.

“What? What sort of company?”

“The kind that followed us here from Andromeda. And they're right on top of us...literally! They might be warships. Inform Queen Rapunzel immediately.”

The man's eyes went wide, but he retained his composure. “You sure she doesn't already know? I mean, she sees everything that happens anywhere in the system.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Sun and all. Just make sure she knows. Havel out.” Mike tapped the mirror again and the glass again reflected Mike.

Several of the consoles in the bridge suddenly erupted in showers of sparks. Their operators cursed and yelped in surprise and pain.

“What the hell was that?” said Mike.

“Unknown, sir,” said the sensor technician. “But everything electrical just fried. I think it's safe to say that we're under attack.”

“Dammit,” grumbled Mike. “EMP?”

“Looks like it, sir.”

“I thought this thing was EMP-shielded.”

“It is, sir. I don't get it either.”

“Then it's a damn good thing so much of this ship runs on magic.”

The ship lurched a little.

“Now what?” said Mike.

“Got me, sir. We're flying blind.”

“The hell we are. We still have eyes, don't we?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mike cursed, then looked back at the ship looming above them. To his relief, they were pulling away noticeably faster than before. He flipped up the speaker tube again. “Scotty? If you have any more tricks up your sleeve, now would be a great time to pull them all out!”

“Aye, sir. But I'm havin' problems down here.”

“I don't want problems, Mister Scott. I need solutions and I need them now.”

“Aye, sir. But this isn't Star Trek. I canna' work miracles.”

Mike groaned. If he'd had a penny for every time in the past twenty years someone had compared the Homeworld Defense Program to Star Trek, he'd be a very rich man.

“This ship don't crash, Scotty. If she crashes, you crashed her. And I'll make sure my ghost haunts yours for eternity. Is that clear?”

“Aye, sir. Perfectly clear, sir.”

“Now get us the hell out of here!”

* * *

Princess Leia watched the starlines resolve into pinpricks as the ship dropped out of hyperspace.

“Report,” she said.

“We're reading an asteroid belt ahead. One of those ships is...ma'am, it's right under us!”

“All stop!” said Leia. “Get me a visual as soon as it clears the hull.” She leaned sideways, even as she knew she couldn't just peek over the edge of her ship.

“Ma'am, the vessel has changed course. New direction of travel is minus thirty degrees relative to the system's plane of elliptic. It's accelerating. They appear to be running.”

“Ready a tractor beam,” said Leia, “but await my orders.” She turned to newly-recognized Jedi Knight Fa Mulan, who'd been called to the bridge shortly before the fleet dropped out of hyperspace. “Mulan?”

Mulan frowned pensively. “The occupants of that craft are terrified,” she said.

“That's what I feel, too,” said Leia. “But I don't get it. They can move an entire planet who knows where and destroy a sun and _they're_ afraid of _us_?”

“It would seem so, your Highness,” said Mulan. “I sense that there is more to them than meets the eye. We should be cautious.”

“You're right,” said Leia.

“Your Highness?” said the ensign at a secondary scanning station. “We have a visual on the craft.”

“On screen.” Leia turned. A dorsal view of the craft below them appeared on the screen. She recognized its configuration as the same type of craft that had somehow destroyed the Bregon star. It appeared to be built of several different alloys. A large purple disk was painted on its hull and on that a golden, stylized sun. There were other markings visible elsewhere on the hull that appeared to be some sort of writing.

“What do you make of it, Ensign?”

“None of those markings appear anywhere in the Republic database,” said the ensign.

“That's not surprising,” said Leia. “We _are_ in another galaxy.”

“That is,” said Mulan, “somewhat less than helpful.”

“Agreed,” said Leia, “but that's partially why we're here.” She turned again. “Lieutenant,” she said, “scan that ship.” Leia waited for the person at the sensor array to complete the task.

“That's strange, ma'am,” he said at length. “I'm getting some anomalous readings from it. Nothing conclusive about its systems. Some two dozen life forms, all humanoid but two. Otherwise, the energy signatures are...bizarre. And no, ma'am, I can't be any more specific.”

Leia frowned.

“Engage a tractor beam and pull that ship into the starboard hangar bay.”

“Yes, ma'am.” A few moments later, “Your Highness? I'm unable to maintain a lock on the craft. The beam...it's...not sticking. I realize that's not a technical term, but that's the best way I can think to describe it. If anything, it's only pushing the other ship away.”

Leia sighed in frustration. “Stand down on that tractor beam. Let them pull ahead, but keep track of them. Maintain heading plus one thousand miles relative to the asteroid field. I want the captains of all vessels and Princess Belle in Stellar Cartography in twenty minutes.”

“Yes, ma'am,” said the comm officer, who relayed the order to the other ships. Then, over the intercom, “Princess Belle to Stellar Cartography. Repeat, Belle to Stellar Cartography.”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, all four starship captains and Princess Belle Atreides had joined Leia and Mulan in Stellar Cartography. It was a large room equipped with mid-space holographic projectors.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” began Leia, “what we're about to discuss is classified. It was omitted from your mission briefings for reasons that should be evident. Princess Belle, if you would?”

“Thank-you, your Highness,” said Belle. She lifted a pad and tapped on it several times. The image of a spiral galaxy, theirs, appeared in the middle of the room.

“As you know, our galaxy looks like this. Or, rather, it used to look like this. Some thirty galactic standard years ago, its stars began to shift. That motion has been causing problems with everyone's navicomputers.”

“Isn't that an understatement?” said the captain of the _Dauntless_.

“Severely,” said Belle. “In fact, even the best navicomputers are having trouble keeping up with all the changes. Theoretically, stars shouldn't be able to do the sorts of things we've observed them doing. I'll go into that in a minute. The drift pattern has proceeded thus.”

Belle tapped on the pad again and the stars migrated incrementally into an entirely different position and then stopped. One edge of the galactic disk was bunched up a little, as though it had hit a wall. The other edge appeared to be split along the galactic plane, with half the stars arcing over the core and the other half arcing under it as though it were a fruit being peeled. The other two edges were attenuated, those stars streaming in the same direction as the bunched-up edge. “That's what it looks like now.”

“But,” said the captain of the _Anvil_ , “that's impossible.”

“You'd think so, wouldn't you?” said Belle. “But it gets worse.” She tapped the pad again and the galaxy moved off a bit. Another, its stars shown in red, appeared next to the blue-colored galaxy. Its configuration was almost a mirror-image.

“Our galaxy is colliding with this one shown in red. My calculations are somewhat cursory, so I've only had about twenty percent of its stars plotted. As the image suggests, it's about two-thirds the size of ours. You'll note a couple of very interesting things about this particular collision.

“First, it looks almost exactly like what would happen if you were to smash a pair of, say, griddle cakes together. That's not supposed to happen. As you know, galaxies actually have a phenomenal amount of empty space. So when they collide, almost all the stars pass between each other and the two galaxies deform solely from gravitational forces.

“What we're seeing here is quite the opposite. Almost all the stars are running into each other and destructively so. I've analyzed the data from the destroyed systems in our galaxy. According to my calculations, more than eighty percent of them are the result of interactions between two stars. The residual energy signatures suggest that the others, some three million, were destroyed by ships like the one we followed.”

“So,” said the captain of the Hammerhead, “that ship we saw destroying that star...it was...what?”

“Only part of the big picture,” said Belle. “The trouble is, we don't know how much of a part, nor do we know what that picture looks like. They could still be behind the whole thing.”

Leia gazed at the image. “I've seen that before,” she said.

All eyes turned toward her. “You have?” said Belle, furrowing her brow. “There's no record of it.”

“It looks,” said Leia, “exactly like two armadas clashing.”

“Are you saying,” said the captain of the Iron-ring, “that they...whoever they are...are manipulating stars?”

“That's a very good question,” said Leia. “If so, then the implications are...frightening.”

“But why?” said the captain of the _Anvil_.

“That's an even better question,” said Leia.

“What's even more frightening,” said Belle, “is that the two galaxies in question were, thirty years ago, some two-point-five million standard light-years apart and that OUR galaxy has moved toward THEIRS. If someone's been manipulating both galaxies, they've dragged us over that much space in just a couple of decades, to say nothing of moving individual stars, some of them ripped away from their planetary systems. Hence those odd refugee situations. Anyone who can do that has a mind-boggling amount of power.”

“I somehow sense,” said Mulan, “that whatever this is, it's something very, very much bigger than us and that we're just somehow caught in the middle of it. I don't think we're the targets.”

“Are you suggesting,” said the captain of the _Dauntless_ , “that we're all...so much collateral damage in some war between the gods?”

“Could be,” said Mulan. “As a great Master once said, 'Strange the ways of the Force are.' Still, I have a very bad feeling about all of this.”

“I concur with Mistress Mulan,” said Leia, “we should proceed with extreme caution. There's a lot here that just doesn't add up. Belle, what can you tell us about this system?”

Belle tapped her pad again. A small yellow light appeared in the middle of the alien galaxy and off toward one of its lateral edges. “We are here,” she said. She tapped the pad again and the image rapidly zoomed in to show a planetary system.

Another yellow light appeared about midway between the system's sun and the outermost planet. “It's a main-sequence star,” said Belle, “though there's a slight, unidentified, anomaly. It's probably nothing. It has eight planets and several dwarf planets, all more or less in the same plane of elliptic. We're currently holding position at the outer edge of a wide asteroid belt between the fourth and fifth planets.

“The third and fourth planets support life. Long-range scans indicate that the third planet has a sentient population of between forty and seventy million and the fourth between two and three million. The fourth planet appears to have been terraformed recently. The fourth planet is registering significant power signatures, but almost none from the third. I've also detected tens of thousands of small, metallic objects scattered throughout the system. Most of them are concentrated in the spheres of influence of the two inhabited worlds, though some are floating in space well off the system's plane of the elliptic. I'll be able to tell you more from high orbit of either world.”

“Thank-you, your Highness,” said Leia. “We need more information. So here's what I propose. Halconin and Anvil will go to the third planet, where Mulan and I will attempt to make contact with their government. Dauntless and Hammerhead will go to the fourth and observe. Iron-ring will remain here. If the bantha poodoo hits the fan, she'll return to Coruscant and report everything we've learned thus far. I want everyone to maintain a constant state of suspicious alert. Do not, under any circumstances, fire on anyone or anything unless they fire upon you first. Is that understood?”

“Yes, your Highness,” came a near-unanimous reply.

“Good. Then let's get to it before more of our star systems bite the dust, as it were.”

* * *

Leia sat at the cockpit of a shuttle, Mulan at the pilot's station.

“I still don't like the readings we're getting off that planet,” said Mulan.

“Neither do I,” said Leia.

“And the unanswered hails?” continued Mulan. “And the satellites in orbit? Your Highness, those were put there either by the residents of this world of by someone else. If by someone else, who were they, and why did they do it? If by the residents of this world, then they must have had a way of both putting them up here and making some use of them. That raises yet more questions. What is their function? Why do they all run on electricity? Why are there no electrical signatures of any sort on the planet aside from thunderstorm activity? Why are there only positronics? What's that other signature we've been reading ever since we made first contact in the Bregon System and why is it so prevalent throughout this system? I fear something very serious happened on this world. I don't know what, but I have a very bad feeling about it.”

“Maybe the Dauntless will find something on the fourth planet.”

The shuttle slowly descended toward the beautiful blue-green world. It reminded Leia a lot of Alderaan.

At 200 miles altitude, the ship's systems suddenly went berserk. Lights flickered and power levels fluctuated as one by one, systems abruptly shut down.

“Mulan,” said Leia, “what's happening?”

“I'm not sure,” said Mulan, her hands flying over the flickering console, “but I think we're passing through some sort of EM barrier. It's really hard to say. Sensors are erratic.”

“I have a bad feeling about this.” There was a jolt and another descending whine as something else when out. “Get us out of here.”

“Yeah, I think you're right.” After a few more moments, not much had changed. The ship was still descending and more systems were failing. “I can't. Systems are not responding.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know. One minute, everything was working fine. Then we passed through that phase horizon and now it isn't. Everything electrical just stopped.”

“Shorted out?”

“No, your Highness. It just...stopped. We're flying blind. We have just enough deflector power to keep from burning up, but that won't do us much good once we hit the ground. Repulsorlifts are questionable. Everything hydraulic should be fine, including the airfoils once there's enough atmosphere to deploy them. But we don't have brakes either. Altimeter, airspeed indicators, sensors, it's all out. And let's not start with artificial gravity, vital systems, and magnetic seals. We could be venting atmosphere and I wouldn't be able to tell you. I have partial manual flight controls, repulsorlifts are at fifty percent, but that's about it.”

“Can you land?”

“That's a matter of opinion.”

It look a while to descend. Mulan carefully deployed the airfoils, mindful of the strain. By the time they'd leveled off, they were only a thousand feet above the ground. A city lay ahead and a river off to the left.

“Hang on,” said Mulan as the city sped past them, “this is going to be rough!”


	3. Mars

Larsdalen  
December 20, CY 59, 2063 AD

Eric Larsson, his wife Luanne, their children, and Luanne's mother Angelica stood before a block of basalt. It read: “William Hutton - June 19, 1971 – August 4, 2048 – Husband, Father, Friend, Horsemaster, Warrior.”  
Angelica raised her grey head toward the equally grey sky and sighed, then wiped a tear from her eye. “It's been more than a decade and I still miss him.”

“We all do,” said Luanne as she, too, sniffed. Her husband put his arm around her and squeezed her shoulder.

Their son thumped his fin on the ground, its cloth covering keeping the grass from sticking to the mucous coating his scales. Eric had come to recognize that particular gesture as the sort of nervous fidgeting associated with emotional strain. He suspected it had a much different effect underwater than it did in a terrestrial cemetery.

A strange whine filled the air. Everyone looked upward, their heads swiveling back and forth.

“Eric?” said Luanne, “What's that?”

“I have no idea,” said Eric, “but it seems to be coming from the south.”

They looked in that direction. A pair of pteridactyloid throndrakali circling beneath the high, grey clouds squawked and suddenly changed direction, flapping powerfully in an eastward direction. Eric and Luanne exchanged glances and resumed their skyward gaze.

The stuttering, whining sound grew louder. Suddenly, a craft shaped a lot like a turtle appeared over the low hill to the southeast. Its nose was tipped slightly upward. It crashed through the trees, shattering them like match sticks, flushing a dozen or so compsognathus from the forest, then abruptly dropped downward. Its tail end dragged along the hillside before the craft hit bottom, bounced once with a loud _BANG_ , then carved a furrow through the farmland, coming to rest just short of Zena Road.

Four lothnellir appeared from somewhere near the Larsdalen wall. Three of them lit out in pursuit of the compies while the fourth made a bee-line toward the downed craft.

“Now what?” said Eric.

“Mayans?” said Luanne.

“What makes you think it's Mayan?”

“You know how fond they are of designing things to look like animals.”

“Not like that, though,” said Eric.

“Great,” said Luanne. “More unauthorized aerospace engineering.”

“Some people still don't get the dichotomy of magical technology.”

“Do _you_?” said Luanne.

“No, not really,” said Eric as he broke off at a jog toward the horses at the edge of the cemetery.

“Sorry, Ma,” said Luanne, as she followed her husband, “no rest for the wicked, I guess.”

Luanne and Eric lit out toward the crashed aircraft, followed by several other equestrians who'd just emerged from the Larsdalen citadel.

Minutes later, they arrived near the craft's nose. It was clearly not designed primarily for atmospheric flight. In fact, its airfoils seemed to be an auxiliary flight system. They were wholly inadequate to supply lift or directional control by themselves. So its main drive system must be magical. It sure made a lot of noise, though—far more than any magically-driven craft should—and was still making noise.

A rectangular section on the fuselage popped inward and then pulled completely out of sight. Two women emerged dragging another person who appeared to be wearing full brass plate armor. It was apparently, and understandably, quite heavy.

Eric, Luanne, and their fellow Bearkillers dismounted and took a few steps forward, crossbows at the ready. They watched as the women dragged the armored person several meters from their craft and dropped him face-down onto the road's gravel shoulder, breathing heavily.

“Why does that one look like Carrie Fisher?” said Eric.

“Who's Carrie Fisher?” said one of the A-listers.

Eric rolled his eyes. He supposed not everyone had the luxury of traveling to Mars for Star Wars movie marathons. “She plays Princess Leia Organa,” he said.

The two women looked at each other, then back at Eric. In a flash of motion, they each took a small cylinder from their belts and held them in an en-garde position. A beam of light erupted from the end of each cylinder with a hissing sound. The beams terminated about a meter from their source, forming blades of energy, and pulsed with a humming sound.

The Bearkillers raised their weapons.

Eric's eyes widened. “Oh, you have... _got_...to be kidding me!”

* * *

Mulan looked at Leia. “What was that?”

“They know my name,” said Leia. “I don't know how, but that man said my name.”

“Interesting,” said Mulan, her eyes sweeping their welcoming committee. “So why is it these people have primitive weapons, yet the ones up there don't?”

“Subjugation,” said Leia, watching the people herself. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

One of the men loosed a bolt. Mulan shifted her lightsaber and intercepted it, almost instantly reducing the head and shaft to so much ash.

One man stalked over to the one who'd loosed and punched him in the face. That man went down hard. The older man stood over him and started yelling.

“Interesting is right,” said Leia. “I think they're afraid of us. And why does that...” She nodded at the large, furry, semi-bipedal animal standing behind the humans. “...look like a tauntaun?”

“No idea,” said Mulan. “Might be nice if Threepio hadn't shut down.”

A loud noise sounded from somewhere inside the shuttle. All eyes turned toward it.

“I have a very bad feeling about this,” said Leia.

“That's the containment system failing,” said Mulan. “The secondary systems were only at partial power and the tertiary systems aren't designed to handle all that strain...not in a gravity well, anyway.”

“What do we do?”

“It's going to get very interesting very quickly.”

“How interesting?”

“Oh God, Oh God, we're all gonna die?”

They turned back around, hoping to run. The older man must have noticed Leia's worried expression...or maybe it was the ominous vibrations running through the ground or the occasional orange glow in the shuttle's hull, or the sparks and random energy arcs it kept spitting out through the door, the nacelles, the airfoils, and the sublight drive nozzles. He pulled something flat and rectangular out of a pouch on his belt, then tapped on it in a complicated pattern. He started talking rapidly to it.

He turned it toward Leia, Mulan, and the ship. Leia could see that it appeared to be some sort of vid screen held in a strangely blueish metal frame. She could see someone else's face in it, though the image was too small to see much else.

The man turned it back to himself and continued talking. Then the wind picked up, bits of grass and dirt swirling around and around the shuttle. A beam of twisting, multicolored light shot out of the sky and surrounded the ship. There was a blur of upward motion within the beam. Then it vanished...and so had the shuttle.

Leia and Mulan looked at each other, then turned back toward their decidedly not-so-welcoming committee, assuming a combat-ready stance. The light returned, now all around them. It blotted out their surroundings. Suddenly, Leia felt something that seemed like motion, but might not have been.

When the light cleared, their surroundings had changed. Instead of greenery and farmland beneath a grey sky, reddish soil showed between sparse vegetation, mostly what looked like grasses and shrubs, and a mostly-clear sky. The air was noticeably drier, colder, and thinner.

Both women tightened their grips on their still-ignited lightsabers.

“Oh!” said C3PO, who still lay face-down on the ground, but was now suddenly reactivated. “Help!”

Leia and Mulan squatted down, their eyes still scanning their environments, and heaved the golden droid to his feet.

“Oh...your Highness...Mistress Mulan. Where are we?”

“I don't know,” said Mulan, “but I'm quite sure it's not where we were a moment ago.” She looked skyward. “I'm not even sure we're on the same planet.”

“How could we be on another planet?”

“I don't know that either, your Highness, but I believe it had something to do with that light.”

Leia looked around to find her bearings. In one direction, the grass, scrub, and red soil stretched as far as she could see. On the distant horizon to her right, a blue-ish white plume billowed up into the sky. In the other direction stood a large structure. It resembled part of the ship they'd followed, the large sphere with a cone mounted on it. Only the cone pointed skyward and the whole thing spun so rapidly, it was nearly a blur.

Every so often, a beam of multicolored light shot out from its base, enveloped a small pile of something on the ground, which then vanished, as though pulled into the device. Another beam then shot out from the tip of the cone and up into the sky. Then another beam shot out from the base and something else took the place of the previous object. She watched it happen over and over as new materials arrived via hover-vehicle at great speed from somewhere out of visual range. It seemed to be a transporter of some kind, though Leia had no idea how it might work.

Off to the left, a section of one of those ships rose into the sky, lifted by some sort of jet-propelled frame.

The place seemed to be some sort of hub for an industrial complex.

Several figures approached from the direction of a low building near the spinning sphere. They rode on something that appeared to be a frame held between a pair of wheels, one fore and one aft. As they drew up in front of Leia, Mulan, and 3PO, they dismounted, throwing a leg over the back and coming to a stop with both feet on the ground.

There were four of them. Two men held the same sort of mechanical weapon Leia had seen at their previous location. A bronze-haired woman held a textured metal rod a little longer than Leia was tall. Another woman, with brown, strangely orange-tinted hair, was barefooted. The barefooted woman said something Leia didn't understand.

Leia leaned over to 3PO. “Threepio? Do you understand what they're saying?” she asked, still watching their new welcoming committee.

“Of course I do!” said 3PO. “Remember that I am fluent in over six million forms of communication. Their language...”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Leia interrupted in a particularly Han Solo-like way. If she had a tenth of a Republic Credit for every time she'd heard the droid say that, she could probably retire. “What are they saying?”

“They want us to lower our weapons.”

Leia eyed the four warily. She leaned over toward Mulan. “Do you sense anything?”

“Mistrust,” said Mulan, “which isn't surprising. Also intrigue...and tension. They definitely have home-turf advantage.”

“Agreed.”

“What's odd is that I could take them all single-handedly, yet they don't seem to be overly concerned about that.”

“Are you sure they don't know something you don't?”

“No, I'm not sure.”

Suddenly, another woman appeared, seemingly out of nowhere. She closely resembled the other barefooted woman and was barefooted herself, but glowing slightly with a golden light. Leia was pretty sure they were sisters. The newly-appeared woman said something and walked toward Leia and Mulan, apparently oblivious to the fact that she had two lightsabers trained on her.

“Stop,” said Mulan. “Don't make us cut you down.” 3PO translated. The woman kept coming.

Mulan swung, her blade passing through the barefooted woman, and held it there. The other woman looked down at the blade piercing her torso, then looked back up at Mulan.

“Hologram?” said Leia to Mulan.

“Not...exactly, your Highness,” said Mulan, her own eyes still on the woman in front of her. “She's not a hologram, per se. Nor does she seem to be a life-form. But I _am_ sensing a life force...not like the quasi-ghost of a Jedi, though. Quite frankly, I don't know what she is.”

Leia shifted mental gears. It helped her think of the conversation as being seamless when using an interpreter.

“Seriously?” said the woman. She stepped out of the blade, then passed her hand through it three times. “Interesting,” she said. Then she brought her hand back up to the blade and pushed it effortlessly aside as the blade made a buzzing sound Leia hadn't heard one make before. She could tell Mulan was resisting as much as possible and could see the strain on the Jedi knight's face.

Leia impulsively thrust her own lightsaber into the woman's face. The moment she did so, she realized it had been a bad idea. The woman glared at Leia, but otherwise gave no indication that she had a lightsaber blade piercing her head. “You know,” said the woman, “you're not exactly making a good first impression. At least you didn't try to shoot any of my people out of the sky on your way in. And, yes, I've been watching you from the moment you entered my heliosphere. Believe me, if I wanted you dead, you'd be dead.”

Leia withdrew her lightsaber and stared.

“So you're from the other galaxy, yes?” said the woman.

“We are,” said Leia.

“What brings you here?”

“We observed several ships stealing a planet from our space and another destroying its sun. We followed that ship here. Our evidence suggests that someone in this system is responsible for that. If that's the case, then we're also here to negotiate cessation of hostilities against our systems.”

“I see,” said the woman. She quickly shifted her grip and grabbed the blade with an open palm. Then she bent it over past ninety degrees. She paused, then reached up with the other hand and grabbed Mulan's hands. Then she twisted the blade even further and tied it into an overhand knot. “Do you represent your galaxy in an official capacity?”

Leia and Mulan gawked. The other woman's question barely cut through their astonishment.

“I...I do,” said Leia finally. It took some effort to look at the other woman, rather than at the inexplicably-contorted lightsaber blade.

“Good,” said the woman, stepping back and placing her hands casually on her hips and smiling. “Then welcome to Mars, Earth, and the Rapunzel System. I'm Rapunzel, Queen of Corona...that's one of the kingdoms on the third planet, Earth...and this is my daughter Crown Princess Sophia...” She motioned to the other barefooted woman. “...and our interpreter, All-Speaker Orla Fallon.” She gestured to the woman with the rod, who nodded. “And whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?”

Leia collapsed her lightsaber. She nodded to Mulan, who hesitantly did the same. “Princess Leia Organa-Solo, Senator of the New Galactic Republic. Pleased to meet you. Is there a place we can go where we can talk?”

“What's wrong with here?”

“I'm accustomed to conducting talks indoors.”

“That's understandable. However, I require that all talks involving me be conducted out-of-doors. That's not negotiable and for reasons that are beyond my control.” She turned and said something to one of the men. He promptly swung his weapon over his back, hopped into his wheeled conveyance, and sped off toward the low building, his legs pumping at the vehicle's manual drive.

Rapunzel turned back to Leia. “I've ordered chairs, table, and refreshments to be brought. I hope water is sufficient? It's not what we usually serve at diplomatic meetings, but it's the safest.”

“We appreciate that,” said Leia.

A few minutes later, one of the hover-vehicles arrived and three people quickly and efficiently brought out tables, chairs, three large glass pitchers of water and a tray full of glass tumblers. Then they all turned around and left. Leia, Mulan, Sophia, and Orla sat down. 3PO and Rapunzel remained standing. Orla poured water for everyone except Rapunzel before sitting down herself.

Leia looked expectantly at Rapunzel.

“Oh, no,” said Rapunzel, a slight apologetic tone in her voice, “I don't drink. We should begin.”

“Thank-you,” said Leia. “As I said, we're here to collect information and to negotiate cessation of hostilities against our galaxy,” said Leia.

Rapunzel cocked an eyebrow and regarded Leia for several long moments. “You're probably expecting the usual political nonsense in which the two of us go back and forth with a lot of posturing, haggling, innuendo, second-guessing, and so on. Quite frankly, I've always found that to be a first-rate pain in the metaphorical neck. So I'll get right to the point.

“In the matter of the second, out of the question.”

“We have no quarrel with you,” said Leia.

“Nor we with you.”

“Yet you destroy stars and steal planets. To what end?”

“Let me be more clear,” said Rapunzel. “Our quarrel is not with _you_ , but with your _galaxy_.”

“I don't understand.”

“What's the difference?” said Mulan.

“The difference,” said Rapunzel, “is that _you_ are residents of your galaxy, just as _we_ are residents of ours. Your galaxy declared war on us. If you can persuade your stars to go away and leave us alone forever, then we will stand down. Otherwise, we will continue to engage any and all stars that advance upon us.”

“I...I'm still not sure I follow,” said Leia.

Rapunzel cocked an eyebrow. “Do you communicate with your stars?”

Leia suppressed a laugh. After making sure 3PO had interpreted that correctly, she asked, “What do you mean by that? Stars are just large, spherical miasmas of plasma.”

Rapunzel smiled. “That is where most people would be wrong. What hardly anyone seems to know is that stars are more than that...much more. We...”

Suddenly, several orbs of yellow light tore through the meeting space, upending the table, scattering all the pitchers and glasses, and knocking 3PO onto his back.

Rapunzel sighed. “If you'll excuse me for a moment.” She turned and bellowed, “ _CHIL-DREN!!!_ ” The sound of it, while not ear-splittingly loud, seemed to fill the small plain and echo off of who knew what.

The orbs of light stopped, then returned at great speed. They came to rest in front of Rapunzel and quickly, but steadily, morphed into four children. “Yes, Mama?” they said in near-unison.

Rapunzel knelt down in front of them. “Darlings, these nice people...” She motioned to Leia and Mulan, who had risen to their feet and had just finished helping 3PO back to his own feet. “...are corporeals from Andromeda. I'm trying to hold a meeting with them about the war.”

One of the children, a little girl who looked about six years old, looked at Leia. “Why do your stars hate us?”

“I beg your pardon?” said Leia.

“Moraya, dear,” said Rapunzel, “it's complicated.”

“No, it isn't,” said Moraya.

“Stars can't hate,” said Mulan.

Rapunzel looked up at the Jedi. “Yes, Mistress, I assure you we can.”

“Why do you...”

“Pardon me,” interrupted Rapunzel, who turned back to her children. “Look, if you behave yourselves, I'll let you raze Los Angeles _and_ Las Vegas down to the molecular level.”

The children jumped up and down, cheering.

“And if you're _very_ good,” continued Rapunzel, “I may even allow you to play catch with a few of Jupiter's moons, provided you return them to their orbits when you're finished with them. In the meantime, why don't you all go skate around Saturn's rings for a while, alright? And for the duration, don't go beyond its orbit. Also, please leave the new ships alone. They belong to the Andromedans. And stay out of the industrial zones.”

The children cheered, turned back into golden orbs, and hurtled up into the sky and out of sight.

“They're...beautiful,” said Leia.

“Thank-you,” said Rapunzel as she stood up and smiled. “Children are such a treasure...and a handful, aren't they?”

“Indeed they are,” said Leia.

“Though I bet yours haven't written string theory equations or drawn complicated five-dimensional diagrams across the faces of any of your moons.”

“No, not so much,” said Leia. That didn't make much sense. How would a child know any of that, let alone know _how_ to do such a thing? And what was that about letting children raze whole cities or play catch with moons?

“I'd have my other daughter Loraya supervise them,” said Rapunzel, “but she's busy doing zero-atmosphere welding. As I was saying, very few corporeal beings have any idea what stars really are.”

“I sense you're about to enlighten us, yes?” said Mulan.

“In addition to all that plasma,” said Rapunzel, “every star, with the exception of dead ones...mostly brown dwarfs...has an energy being within it. It's similar to the way you have a spirit living in your body. It's actually rather more complicated than that, but it would take a while to fully explain.” She broke off and looked skyward.

An orb of golden light descended and, as with the children, quickly morphed into a person...an adult woman who could easily have passed for Rapunzel's sister. “Hello, Mother,” said the woman. “It's break time up there, so I thought I'd make an appearance.”

“Thank-you, my dear,” said Rapunzel. She introduced the woman as her daughter Loraya. “Forty years ago,” continued Rapunzel, “I was a human. For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I had to ascend and exist as an energy being. Then thirty years ago, I became a star. The procedure was complicated and I won't go into it now. When I returned and took Sol's place as this system's sun, my human husband and I...well, you know...and Loraya was born. She's the first of her kind, an energy being born of the union between a star and a corporeal.

“How?” said Mulan.

“My condolences,” said Leia.

“I beg your pardon?” said Rapunzel.

“If you're a star,” said Leia, “and your husband was human, then...?”

Rapunzel tipped her head back and laughed. “Oh, no, no. He's very much alive.” She gestured to herself. “Surely you don't think this is just for show, do you?” She held out her left arm, palm upward and without warning, dug the fingers of her right hand into her left forearm, and peeled back a large flap of skin.

Inside, instead of flesh, instead of bionic mechanics, there was...not exactly nothing...just a lot of dull, golden light, as though one had taken sunlight and condensed it into something solid. It was the single strangest thing Leia had ever seen. Rapunzel spread the flap back over her arm and Leia watched as it sealed up immediately.

“I'm the only star that can do this.”

“What, exactly,” said Mulan, “ _is_ this?”

“This is what I looked like when I was human. You're looking at a projection of sorts, though it's really much more complicated than that. But it's how I interact with corporeals. I'll leave it at that. 

“What we didn't know at the time was that stars don't generally interact with corporeals, let alone...come together with one. That's never made much sense to me, as no star has ever joined with a corporeal anyway. Personally, I think they're all jealous.

“None of the other stars in the cluster received the news very well, much to my dismay. Those of Milky Way...the Earth name for our galaxy...were willing to agree to disagree with me on the matter. After all, why should a woman not be allowed to...have relations with her husband? The stars of Andromeda...the Earth name for your galaxy...on the other hand, were livid. They declared war on me and Loraya and promptly moved to attack us, intent on wiping me, my system, and all its inhabitants out of the heavens.

“The Milky Way stars regard me as one of their own, so grudgingly came to my defense. I was unwilling to allow them to put their lives on the line while we cowered, so I mobilized the inhabitants of Earth. We built an armada, part of which you've seen, and took to the heavens to assist in my defense. We knew it was likely that we'd encounter inhabited worlds.

“You see, stars always fight to the death. I don't know why, but we do. Most of us also have very little regard for the worlds that revolve around us. You're more of...a source of entertainment, as it were. Therefore, those stars with planetary systems will either drag them along, or leave them behind entirely. In either event, those planets are doomed when either their star, or the one it's fighting, goes nova. It's a very messy affair. 

“We were unwilling to allow innocent inhabited worlds to be caught up and destroyed as collateral damage in what is essentially an intergalactic hissy fit. So we built ships to move those planets from their suns and place them in orbit around one of the several foster suns who've volunteered for that.

“We weren't expecting so many inhabited systems. We were expecting even fewer space-faring ones. I'd have said that it was going to make things more difficult, but I can see that it already has. So it would seem that we have even bigger problems than having a trillion stars trying to kill us. Seeing as how they're _your_ stars, we're interested in any solutions you may have.”

Leia blinked. She wasn't entirely sure what to think. Queen Rapunzel's claim was...well, it strained credulity, to say the least. “How do we know you're telling the truth?”

“Strictly speaking,” said Rapunzel, “you don't. We have a saying...'the truth points to itself.' As a space-faring race, you know a lot about interstellar navigation. You will therefore be aware that your stars have been moving far more than can be explained by normal drift. You will also have noticed other anomalies. I think you already have your answer.”

Leia and Mulan looked at each other, then back at Rapunzel. The woman...sun...had a point. “Your explanation,” said Mulan, “though difficult to believe, is indeed consistent with our observations.”

“What do you want us to do?” said Leia.

“How many inhabited systems do you have? The Andromedan stars have been, shall we say, less than forthcoming when it comes to that sort of information.”

“Millions,” said Leia.

“Hundreds of millions,” said Mulan.

Rapunzel frowned. “Then it's far worse than we thought. We're going to need an entire globular galaxy just to host all your systems. Every star we use for that is one less that's available for combat.”

Leia understood all too well the tricky nature of stretched resources. She also knew where the line of questioning was going. “And you want us to help you...move us.”

“Yes.”

“I'm sure you realize there will be considerable resistance,” said Mulan.

“Of that I have no doubt. I'd say you have no idea how hard it was to bring the mere seventy million people of Earth together on this, but I'm fairly sure you _do_ have some idea. The ugly truth of the matter is that any system that refuses to move will be destroyed. That's not a threat, merely a statement of fact. It will happen even if I and my people pull back and sit on our metaphorical hands.

“Now, if you'd like, we can suspend the planet-moving part of the operation, pending your approval. In the meantime, however, the stars will not stop and your systems will continue to be caught in the cross-fire.”

“Yet,” said Mulan, “you've already been...moving us.”

“Correct. We've been moving planets without anyone else's permission mainly because there wasn't time to do anything else and because their inhabitants have so far posed no threats to our ships. We also didn't know about your galactic government. We knew it was possible, but we haven't had the time to investigate. The stars of neither galaxy will pause just because their corporeals are deliberating.

“This is a war of attrition. It will continue until one galaxy or the other has been completely extinguished. There's nothing any of us can do to stop it. You have two choices. You can get out of the way, or you can die. We can help you with the former if you allow us, but otherwise, I'm afraid there's nothing more I can offer on the matter.”

Leia thought for a few moments. “I have an idea,” she said finally. “What if we work together to decide in which order to move our planets. The closer one moves to our galactic core, the more...civilized...our worlds become. Most of the civilized ones easily have enough firepower to destroy your ships. Not all of them have much patience.

“Therefore, your ships will, in some cases, require a military escort. Not all of our systems are part of the Alliance. Even those that are might not be easily convinced.”

“You're proposing that we be allowed to move planets on a world-by-world basis pending their and your permission, yes?”

“I am,” said Leia.

Rapunzel considered that for a moment, then turned to Orla and Sophia and exchanged a few words with them. “That's fair enough,” said Rapunzel finally.

“I don't think everyone will cooperate, however,” said Mulan.

“Sad though that is, we think we can live with that. It _is_ your galaxy after all. That sort of thing happens on Earth all the time. A natural disaster threatens and people are warned to get out of the way. Some do. Others stay and die.”

Rapunzel looked skyward and sighed. “If you'll excuse me, I have more administrating to do and it looks like there's about to be a traffic jam about a million miles out. I'll leave you in the capable hands of Sophia. If you'd like to go indoors at this point to work out the details of our agreement, feel free. I foresee being occupied for a while. A sun's work is never done. It's a good thing I don't have to sleep.” At that, she vanished.

More than two hours later, Leia, Mulan and 3PO once again stood outside. Leia breathed a sigh of relief as she watched a Republic shuttle descend through the Martian sky. Things were turning out to be very, very strange, and that was saying something.


End file.
